Vultures, such as the Vulnerable Cape VultureGyps coprotheres, have a higher risk of collision with wind turbines. Thus appropriate assessment of the collision risk to these species must inform the decision as to whether the site is suitable for development.

BirdLife South Africa and BirdLife International are very concerned that the proposed development of a wind farm at Letseng in Lesotho could have severe impacts on the already declining populations of Cape Vultures and Lammergeiers. South Africa and Lesotho share the responsibility of safeguarding the populations of Lammergeiers and Cape Vultures in the Lesotho Highlands and the surrounding escarpment of South Africa.

PowerNET Developments (Pty) Ltd propose to erect 42 wind turbines (each with a capacity of 850 kW) near Letšeng-La-Terae, on the north-eastern escarpment of the Drakensberg. The environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the proposed Letseng Wind Farm is in its final stages of completion. The avifaunal specialist report, compiled by well-respected ornithologist Dr Andrew Jenkins, indicates that even with mitigation, the anticipated impacts of the project on highly unique and sensitive avifauna will be of high to very high negative significance, rendering the project unsustainable.

While wind energy is fairly new to southern Africa, poorly located wind turbines elsewhere in the world have had significant impacts on bird populations. Impacts include loss of habitat, disturbance and mortality through collisions with the turbine blades. In Smøla, Norway, for example, wind farms caused the local population of White-tailed Eagles (also known as Sea Eagles) to plunge by 95% – reducing the number from 19 eagle pairs to only one pair.

Such devastating impacts have not occurred at all wind farms. “The considered location of wind farms is the key to ensuring that impacts on birds are kept to a minimum”, says Samantha Ralston, Birds and Renewable Energy Manager for BirdLife South Africa. Among other things, turbines should be kept well away from areas frequently used by collision-prone birds such as large-bodied raptors.

Collision-prone vultures cannot observe political boundaries

Vultures play an important ecological, economic, cultural and aesthetic role. They are scavengers and by disposing of waste and carcasses they help control populations of other disease-carrying scavengers and pests. In this way they help protect human health, as well as that of domesticated animals and wildlife.

Unfortunately, vultures appear to be particularly prone to colliding with the turbine blades. High collision rates have been observed in Griffon Vultures at wind farms in Europe, most notably in Tarifa, Spain. The Griffon Vulture is a close relative of the Cape Vulture. A recent study in Tarifa, Spain, estimated that 0.22 vulture deaths occurred per turbine per year. This was reduced by approximately half with the introduction of mitigation, but even with mitigation one can expect that for every 10 turbines at least one vulture will be killed every year.

The proposed Letseng wind farm is located in habitat that is critical for both Lammergeier and Cape Vulture, both threatened species. Lammergeier is listed as regionally Endangered and Cape Vulture as Vulnerable in South Africa. Birds do not observe political boundaries and the populations of both species span South Africa and Lesotho. A further decline of birds in Lesotho, will severely impact the viability and survival rates of the vultures in South Africa. Using population models, scientists have demonstrated that even a small increase in adult mortality could cause the rapid decline and even local extinction of these long-lived, slow-breeding birds. “BirdLife South Africa has learnt from its partners in Europe and North America that incorrectly located wind farms can cause massive mortalities of vultures and eagles”, says Mark Anderson, CEO of BirdLife South Africa. “For this reason, we will strongly oppose any wind farm developments which we believe will result in significant impacts on Lammergeier, Cape Vulture and other threatened South African birds”, he added.

Responsible sustainable development must be consultative

BirdLife South Africa fully recognises the need to move towards generating clean energy and supports the responsible development of a renewable energy infrastructure in southern Africa. BirdLife South Africa therefore encourages wind farm developers to work with them to help identify suitable sites for wind energy to minimise the impact on birds and the environment while delivering lasting sustainable development. For example, prior to siting a wind farm, a Strategic Environmental Assessment should be undertaken as this enables avoidance of areas that are known to be environmentally sensitive.

Dr Julius Arinaitwe, BirdLife International’s Regional Director for Africa says development is vital, but must progress in an environmentally sensitive manner. “Development is underpinned by healthy ecosystems and the biodiversity therein. The choices we make now must not negatively affect Africa’s ability to develop in future”, he said.

BirdLife South Africa and BirdLife International are calling on PowerNET Developments (Pty) Ltd to voluntarily withdraw the EIA application. BirdLife South Africa is also encouraging the public and partners to comment on the EIA report. Further information can be obtained from Samantha Ralston (at energy@birdlife.org.za or 083-6733948).

There are hundreds of reasons to visit Shetland’s magical islands. I go as often as I can, usually in summer when Britain’s most northern isles enjoy almost continuous daylight.

That means you have endless time to watch sea mammals such as seals, dolphins and whales and seabirds from comical puffins to majestic sea eagles.

There are many ancient sites and even a chance to visit the home of Scotland’s second best known poet – communist Hugh MacDiarmid – who lived on Whalsey, one of Shetland’s many islands.

Local ceilidhs are held in the countless halls offering a chance to hear and dance to the legendary Shetland fiddlers and other traditional music.

Best of all are the endless expanses of dramatic rugged coastal scenery.

That continuous daylight in summer has to be paid for, and in midwinter Shetland can be a dark and gloomy place until the islanders brighten it up with an amazing fire festival – Europe’s largest. They call it Up Helly Aa.

For 24 hours on the last Tuesday of January (this year the 29th) the capital town of Lerwick and the whole of the islands of Shetland go mad.

However dark and dreary, the proud boast is that “there will be no postponement for weather.”

As we are talking about Britain’s most northerly corner – on the same latitude as southern Greenland – that is some boast.

Gales, sleet and snow or flooding have never yet stopped the event.

The Jarl – leader of the festival for just one day – will have been elected a dozen years before and will have been planning the longest day of his life since then.

Today he will don his raven-winged Viking helmet, grab his axe and shield and embark on a 24-hour sleepless marathon.

On the evening of Up Helly Aa Day over 800 heavily disguised men form ranks in the darkened streets of the old whaling port of Lerwick.

January 2013. The first known nest of one of the world’s rarest birds – the Critically Endangered Stresemann’s Bristlefront – has been discovered in Brazil. Of perhaps equal significance is that strong evidence of active nestlings was also found.

Rediscovered in 1995 – May be just 15 birds alive

The Stresemann’s Bristlefront is one of the world’s most threatened bird species – unrecorded for 50 years until it was rediscovered in 1995 near Una, Bahia, in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest region. The world population estimate is fewer than 15 individuals. Its population is declining owing to fires, logging, and the clearance of humid valley-floor forest for cattle ranching and agriculture.

Nest tunnel

On October 30, 2012, Dimas Pioli and Gustavo Malacco, two Brazilian researchers visiting Fundação Biodiversitas’ Mata do Passarinho Reserve discovered the bird’s nesting tunnel entrance, a tennis ball sized hole, located about three feet from the ground in an exposed dirt vertical edge that contained overhanging vegetation. Nesting tunnels are typical for the ground dwelling Tapaculo family, to which the Bristlefront belongs. The hole is estimated to be approximately six feet deep. It was surveyed and filmed with a micro-camera and further data should be published shortly in an ornithological journal.

Probable chicks

“This is the discovery of a lifetime made all the more gratifying by the fact that not only have we found live adult birds, but we have also found strong evidence of several chicks as well,” said Alexandre Enout, the Reserve’s Manager. “It is urgent that we protect more of the natural Atlantic Forest in this area and reforest areas where forest has been lost. The best way to save this species is by increasing its potential habitat.”

Stresemann’s Bristlefront

The 8-inch long, medium-sized, long-tailed bird has distinctive, long, pointed forehead bristles and a slender dark bill. The female is cinnamon-brown above, with duskier tail and is a bright cinnamon-rufous below.

American Bird Conservancy is working closely with its in-country partner Fundação Biodiversitas to protect and acquire land in and around the 1,500-acre Mata do Passarinho Reserve in northeast Brazil. This reserve protects a key fragment of Atlantic Forest which provides the environment required by the bird. About 245 bird species have been recorded in the reserve, 37 of which are endemic to Brazil. In addition to being the only know site for the Stresemann’s Bristlefront, it is a critically important site for the Endangered Banded Cotinga and the Critically Endangered yellow-breasted capuchin monkey.

The Atlantic Forest is one of the most endangered forests in the world. Over 500 years ago it extended along the coast of Brazil into Paraguay and northern Argentina. Forest coverage has now been reduced to less than 10 percent of the original area due to logging and conversion to agriculture and pasture.

92% of amphibians are endemic

Despite so little forest remaining, the Atlantic Forest remains extraordinarily lush and is a treasury of biodiversity and endemic species. The forest harbours around 20,000 species of plants, with almost 450 tree species being found in just one hectare in some areas. Approximately 40 percent of its vascular plants – 52 percent of the trees – and up 60 percent of its vertebrates, including 92 percent of amphibians are endemic species, meaning they are found nowhere else in the world. The Atlantic Forest has spectacular bird diversity, with over 930 species, about 15 percent of which are found nowhere else. Because most of the region’s forests have been cleared during 500 years of exploitation, many species are now threatened with extinction and, sadly, many others have already been lost. Nearly 250 species of amphibians, birds, and mammals have become extinct due to the result of human activity in the past 400 years and more than 11,000 species of plants and animals are considered threatened in the Atlantic Forest today.

American cyclist Lance Armstrong’s account of his years using performance-enhancing drugs and his more than ten-year campaign to intimidate and discredit critics says a good deal about professional sports and the broader social atmosphere. Armstrong spoke to television talk show host Oprah Winfrey January 13 and the interview was aired in two parts last week.

Armstrong, born in 1971 in Plano, Texas, won the Tour de France cycling race a record seven years in a row from 1999 to 2005, along with many other competitions. He battled testicular cancer that had spread to his brain and lungs in 1996-97. Armstrong retired from cycling in 2005, but came back four years later before finally bowing out in 2011. At the time he was facing a US federal investigation into the doping allegations, although that did not lead to any charges being laid.

In October 2012, the US Anti-Doping Agency issued a lengthy report, accompanied by 1,000 pages of evidence, including statements from 11 former teammates, accusing Armstrong of doping. The USADA alleged that the cyclist had presided over “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”

Armstrong has been stripped of his Tour de France titles and all other titles from 1998 onward and been banned for life from all sports that follow the World Anti-Doping Agency code.

Throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, Armstrong attacked anyone who represented a threat to his position in cycling and his cover-up of illicit operations. After French cyclist Christophe Bassons raised the issue of doping in newspaper articles and comments, Armstrong rode alongside him during the 1999 Tour de France and told him, according to Bassons, that “it was a mistake to speak out that way, and he asked why I was doing it.” Bassons continued, “I told him that I’m thinking of the next generation of riders. Then he said ‘Why don’t you leave, then?’”

On French television news at the time, Armstrong repeated his claim that Bassons’ accusations weren’t good “for cycling, for his team, for me, for anybody.” Armstrong added, “If he thinks cycling works like that, he’s wrong and he would be better off going home.” The French rider’s allegations about doping in the sport essentially ended his career.

On numerous occasions, Armstrong went to court to silence accusers, including former friends and colleagues, as well as media outlets, winning millions of dollars in settlements in the process. When Winfrey asked him in the televised interview about masseuse Emma O’Reilly, who reported on Armstrong’s dirty tricks, he acknowledged, “We ran over her, we bullied her.” Did you sue O’Reilly, Armstrong was asked. “To be honest, Oprah, we sued so many people I don’t even [know]. I’m sure we did.”

His very public and strident years-long defense, it turns out, was nothing but a tissue of lies.

This is not a pretty picture, and there is no need to make it any prettier. There is often an instinctive tendency to come to the defense of anyone under assault by the venal American media. However, Armstrong is no Muhammad Ali, suspended from boxing in 1967 because he refused induction into the US Army during the Vietnam War, or track star John Carlos, victimized for his protest at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. Or even baseball player Magglio Ordóñez and manager Ozzie Guillen, vilified by the media and the ultra-right for comments in support of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, respectively.

Armstrong was clearly part of the problem. He apparently operated a type of mini-Mafia in cycling, bringing to the sport the very worst of American predatory entrepreneurship. There is in his story—particularly his readiness to destroy the careers of other people—something sinister and disturbing. In the Winfrey interview, he referred to his “win at all costs” attitude.

There is, of course, a large dose of hypocrisy in the media assault on him now. Many of those doing the assaulting participated in building the cyclist into a demigod-like celebrity figure, with his heroic story of returning from near death to triumph at the Tour de France. Such a figure inevitably attracts a large crowd of apologists and bloodsuckers.

Major corporate interests were involved in Armstrong’s career, including Nike (which has removed from its web site the 2001 press release for Road to Paris, the documentary the company produced about Armstrong’s preparations for the Tour de France that year), Anheuser-Busch, Trek Bicycle, Giro protective gear, bicycle component makers SRAM and Shimano, AMD [semiconductors], Oakley sports equipment, RadioShack, 24 Hour Fitness, FRS and Honey Stinger (both energy products’ firms) and numerous others.

Investment banker Thomas Weisel, who founded Montgomery Securities, which sold for $1.3 billion in 1997, and later launched Thomas Weisel Partners, a “growth focused investment banking firm,” was a key backer of the company formed to manage the US Postal Service cycling team, which Armstrong joined in 1998.

The ultra-commercialization and degradation of sports created the social and economic context for Armstrong’s wrongdoings. The sums involved are huge. The cyclist told Winfrey that after his fall, various firms called to cancel their relations with him: “You could look at the day-and-a-half when people left. You asked me the cost. I don’t like thinking about it, but it was a $75 million day. All gone and probably never coming back.” For the companies and event organizers involved, of course, the stakes run considerably higher, into the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars.

Doping, by all accounts, was widespread, even quasi-universal, in cycling. Armstrong’s principal contribution seems to have been organization and audacity in its usage. Winfrey noted, “To keep on winning it meant you had to keep taking banned substances to do it? Are you saying that’s how common it was?” Armstrong responded, “Yes, and I’m not sure that this is an acceptable answer, but that’s like saying we have to have air in our tires or we have to have water in our bottles. That was, in my view, part of the job.”

Asked if he felt he had been cheating, Armstrong answered, “I went in and just looked up the definition of cheat and the definition of cheat is to gain an advantage on a rival or foe that they don’t have. I didn’t view it that way. I viewed it as a level playing field.”

In any event, the cycling champion’s ruthless outlook did not come out of the blue. Armstrong matured in the Reagan-Bush-Clinton years, when the “free market,” selfishness and greed were worshipped at every turn by the entire media and political establishment. “Force works,” declared the Wall Street Journal following the war on Iraq in 1990-91, and the notion that bullying and violence were the solution to each and every problem was communicated through the political system, popular culture and the sports industry.

One doesn’t want to exaggerate, but Armstrong, in his intimidation tactics, relentless, almost provocative, lying, and his apparent belief he could get away with anything, seems to have borrowed more than a little from official America’s relations with the rest of the globe over the past two decades.

Bound up with the money, corporate sponsorships and emergence of the “athlete as entrepreneur” has been the advent of the celebrity culture in America, which also swept Armstrong along in its wake. Indeed, his conversation with Oprah Winfrey, on national television, was one of that culture’s false and stage-managed operations. (No doubt all sorts of legal and financial calculations went into Armstrong’s appearance, including perhaps the first step in a process of publicly rehabilitating himself as part of an effort to get his lifetime sports ban lifted.)

One of the country’s richest individuals, Winfrey assiduously stayed away from any queries or comments that might have shown the sports-entertainment industry, of which she is a part, or American business operations in general in a bad light.

The questions remained at a low level, all directed toward making Armstrong accept personal responsibility for his actions, which he obediently did, according to the well-established rules of the American public confession genre. “All the fault and all the blame here falls on me,” the cyclist told the interviewer, who concluded her program helpfully with the Biblical maxim that “the truth will set you free.”

Armstrong succumbed to strong pressures in a generally demoralized and demoralizing climate. One can explain and understand his actions without for an instant endorsing them. By his reckless and criminal activity, he squandered his considerable skills and ruined his public standing forever. The generation now coming into active life—in sports, art, politics and elsewhere—will, we are convinced, produce from among its midst far more widely a different sort of human personality—one drawn to principles and able to resist the corrupting pressures of the sports-media-entertainment industry.

Only thirteen days after starting a war in Mali, France is massively escalating its troop presence there, even as reports emerge of escalating ethnic killings by French-backed Malian troops.

On Tuesday the Malian regime extended the state of emergency declared on January 11 for three months. At the same time, French and Malian troops set up positions in central Mali around the strategic airfield at Sévaré.

The airfield was reportedly the main initial target of the French intervention. Paris wanted to keep it from falling into the hands of the northern-based Malian opposition, so France could use the airfield to fly troops and equipment into the region.

French forces are also blocking journalists from reporting from the war zone, to slow the stream of reports of killings of and atrocities against civilians by French and French-backed Malian forces. In Sévaré, at least 11 people were killed at a military camp, near its bus station and its hospital. “Credible information” pointed to about 20 other executions, with the bodies “buried hastily, notably in wells,” the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) reported.

A witness said the Malian army “gathered all the people who didn’t have national identity cards and the people they suspected of being close to the Islamists to execute them, and put them in two different wells near a bus station.” The soldiers allegedly poured gasoline into the wells and set them ablaze to hide the evidence.

Residents of Mopti in central Mali said that the Malian army had arrested, interrogated, and tortured innocent civilians, because the army thought that they were involved in the rebellion. Many Tuareg, who originally controlled the north, fled south when the Islamists took over and are being singled out for reprisals. Amnesty International claims to have evidence of extrajudicial killings of Tuareg civilians, the indiscriminate shelling of a Tuareg camp, and the killing of livestock.

A woman of the Fulani ethnic group described her situation: “The army suspects us—if we look like Fulani and don’t have an identity card, they kill us. But many people are born in small villages and it’s very difficult to have identification. We are all afraid. There are some households where Fulanis or others who are fair-skinned don’t go out any more. We have stopped wearing our traditional clothes—we are being forced to abandon our culture, and to stay indoors.”

The Malian army has a record of ethnic killings. Last September a truck with eighteen preachers from Mauritania crossed the border at Diabaly on their way to Bamako for a conference. Though none were armed and they had papers indicating their mission, all were massacred by the troops manning the border checkpoint.

Amateur cell phone videos on the internet show huge blasts and fireballs in living areas, and bloggers from Mali are reporting numerous casualties. The United Nations has reported that thousands of people have been forced from their homes over the past ten days. An estimated 230,000 people are now displaced across the country. According to Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the United Nations’ refugee agency, the violence could soon displace up to 700,000 in Mali and around the region.

The Norwegian Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reported that people in the north were increasingly heading into the desert, as Algeria had closed its borders. Many are fleeing on foot because they cannot afford boats or buses.

Sory Diakite, the mayor of Konna, who fled to Bamako with his family after a French raid, described the bombing of his town. He said that during the assault in the first days of the war, people “were killed inside their courtyards, or outside their homes. People were trying to flee to find refuge. Some drowned in the river. At least three children threw themselves in the river in order to avoid the bombs. They were trying to swim to the other side.”

The constant increase in the number of soldiers, the massive build-up of ever-deadlier weapons and the increasing willingness of its allies to step up their support signify that such violence will only continue to escalate.

France is deploying more soldiers and more high-tech weaponry. Some 2,150 French soldiers are in Mali, and their number will rise to 5,000 by the end of the month.

The African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA) will comprise almost 6,000 soldiers, instead of the initially planned 3,300 soldiers, costing around $500 million.

The Gazelle helicopters that participated in the first wave of French air attacks are being replaced by Tiger helicopter gunships, which have a longer range and greater firepower. “Cheetah” units based in France have been placed on alert, including a number of Leclerc heavy tanks and units armed with truck-mounted 155-millimeter artillery pieces.

So far nearly 1,000 African troops from Benin, Nigeria, Togo and Burkina Faso have arrived in Mali. Senegalese troops and up to 2,000 soldiers from Chad are on the way. Their transport is being provided by France’s allies: Denmark, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Emirates, and Canada. Italy approved sending 15 to 24 military instructors to work alongside the European Union (EU) in training Malian forces and also agreed to provide logistical support with at least two cargo planes.

US forces began their mission in support of the Mali war on Monday. Five four-engine C-17 planes took off from the Istres-LeTubé airbase in southern France, loaded with French cargo which they dropped off in the Malian capital, Bamako.

According to German news magazine Der Spiegel, British forces were on “high alert” for possible deployment in Mali, in case France asks for help. The British foreign ministry denied the report, however.

Yesterday French Rafale and Mirage jets bombed targets near Gao, Timbuktu and Ansongo, a town near the border with Niger. Col. Oumar Kande, ECOWAS military and security adviser in Mali, said, “It is possible we will win back Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal in a month, but it is impossible to say how long the overall war will last.”

The strike by Athens subway workers continued into its seventh day yesterday in defiance of a court ruling declaring the work action illegal. The ruling handed down Monday night allows the government to invoke emergency powers to force the strikers back to work by means of a “civil mobilisation,” which effectively conscripts the workers into the armed forces.

In December, the Greek parliament passed a new package of austerity measures that had been agreed by euro zone finance ministers as the condition for further loans to Greece.

The metro workers are employed by state-run Urban Rail Transport, which manages Athens’ metro, tram and electric railway services. The government measures slash the salaries of all employees at public enterprises, known as DEKOs, in accordance with a new pay system for civil servants. The Urban Rail Transport wage bill is to be reduced from €97.7 million in 2012 to €74.6 million this year (a 25 percent cut). Average gross monthly wages without overtime on the metro will fall from about €2,500 to €2,038.

Other workers employed by the Athens Mass Transit System (STASY) have also gone on strike. On Tuesday, the bus, trolley and tram systems joined the strike, carrying out four- and five-hour work stoppages. There was no service on the Kifissia-Piraeus electric railway or the tram between noon and 4 p.m. Wednesday. Workers at firms not controlled by STASY have also struck.

Coinciding with Monday’s ruling, euro zone finance ministers meeting in Brussels backed the pay-out to Greece of a fresh loan instalment worth €9.2 billion (US$12.3 billion), following on from the €34.3 billion agreed on last month.

The attack on metro workers and other civil servants is part of the decimation of the living standards of the entire Greek working class. Workers, young people and pensioners are living in poverty conditions not witnessed since the Nazi occupation and face still more brutal austerity measures. In contrast, the bankers and ruling elite in Greece and Europe continue to have massive amounts of money shovelled at them. The vast bulk of Greece’s loans from the EU is immediately repatriated to the country’s international creditors, led by German and French banks, and most of what is left ends up in the coffers of Greece’s own banking elite.

On Tuesday, several transport workers’ unions, not including SELMA, met to discuss the dispute. Unable to contain the anger of workers at this stage, the union bureaucrats endorsed a strike by workers in all sections of public transport to be held between noon and 4 p.m. on January 29. A further 24-hour strike is being planned for January 31, according to reports.

The smashing of the strike is a priority of the New Democracy-PASOK-DIMAR (Democratic Left) coalition government, which is determined to set a new benchmark for wages and pensions that have already declined in value by 40 percent and more.

New Democracy Transport Minister Costis Hatzidakis declared at the outset of the strike that “no group of workers will be exempted from the unified salary structure.”

“There is no scope for concessions,” Hatzidakis warned. “The government cannot back down on this.” Threatening to issue a civil mobilisation order, he added, “There are limits and terms for strikes that I fear have been trampled on.”

The right-wing newspaper Kathimerini noted in regard to Hatzidakis’s intervention that “the measures must be implemented as part of the country’s commitments to foreign creditors.”

On Wednesday, the government reiterated its threat to break the strike. Speaking to Radio Vima, spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said, “If the instigators of the strike do not comply with the court’s decisions by tomorrow, they will have to face the legal repercussions. The law foresees what should be done with those leading the strikes.”

Since the eruption of the financial crisis in 2008, the Greek ruling class has repeatedly relied on the army to suppress working class opposition. In 2010, the government, then headed by the social democratic PASOK, issued a civil mobilisation order and brought in the army to smash the truckers’ strike. The following year, the army was placed on standby to intervene against the refuse workers’ strike.

…

What is required is an appeal to the entire Greek working class to rally behind the metro workers and take up a struggle to bring down the austerity government of the bankers and big business.

The transport workers’ stoppage is the latest in a series of strikes testifying to profound social tensions. Last week, Hellenic Postbank workers struck for 48 hours to protest the state-owned operation’s privatisation and sell-off. Doctors and other medical staff have taken strike action.

On Tuesday, Elefsina Shipyard workers, who have not been paid for six months, began a series of 25-hour rolling strikes. The workers are also protesting the fact that only a portion of their wages from 2010 have been paid, as well as the threat of the shipyard being closed down due to the government’s failure to pay for the construction of three navy vessels.

Disagreement among Greek coalition government partners and escalation of the public transport workers-government conflict are emerging from the decision to impose the measure of ’civil mobilization’ against striking Metro workers. The proposal of civil mobilization was submitted by Transport Minister Costis Hadjidakis and was accepted by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. While coalition government partner PASOK supports it, junior partner Democratic Left rejects it as ‘extreme crisis management option’.

After using emergency powers to break a nine-day strike by Athens subway workers, the New Democracy-led coalition government in Greece extended its “civil mobilization” order to 2,500 rail and tram workers. Rail, tram and bus workers struck on Friday to protest the state repression against the subway workers: here.